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Letters to the Editor: Dying in the military folly of Afghanistan

I RESIGNED my commission when the Iraq invasion was imminent, believing an ill-conceived “war on terror” to have taken a fatal direction. Christina Lamb’s report (News, last week) exceeded my worst expectations. Leo Docherty says the British Afghan campaign is modelled on Malaya; but there, the Communist terrorists were outsiders even to their own, Chinese, community. Most Malayans were united in the certainty of independence once the emergency ended.

Now the West, no friend of impoverished Afghans since America abandoned them after the Russian withdrawal, is seemingly bent — or so it must seem to Afghans — purely on revenge, and British troops are “penned in” like the Communists of 50 years ago. One wonders if military planners explored worst-case scenarios, or — as with Arnhem in 1944 — presumed Taliban compliance with their plan.

Most dismal of all is the government’s failure to back the limited military capability by resourcing the reconstruction for